Cloud is changing how business gets done -- Verizon 2016 State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud report

Sixty-nine percent of enterprises say cloud has enabled them to re-engineer one or more of their business processes, according to Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ 2016 State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud report. In addition, enterprises report moving mission-critical workloads to the cloud improves business operations – 88 percent say it improves responsiveness to business needs, 65 percent say it improves overall operations. “Last year, the news was that cloud was being used for mission-critical workloads, now enterprises are using it to transform how they achieve that mission,’” said Ryan Shuttleworth, cloud chief technology officer for Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “Companies are using cloud technologies to create new customer experiences, reengineer their business processes, find new opportunities to grow and manage risk and compliance measures.” The State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud report is Verizon’s third annual report providing original data and analysis of cloud usage within the enterprise, and its impact on the IT organization and business at large. It is the only report combining internal data from one of the industry’s most experienced cloud services providers with data and insight from third-party analyst and research firms. It presents both a snapshot of current cloud trends, along with analysis and predictions on the future of cloud in the enterprise. Other key highlights from the 2016 report include:

Private cloud on the rise. Nearly half of enterprises (44 percent) are currently using, or plan to implement, a private cloud solution. Only slightly more than one in three respondents (37 percent) feel the same about public cloud.

No one cloud fits all. More than half (53 percent) of enterprises use two to four cloud providers. And 26 percent use more than 10. Enterprises are embracing a multi-cloud strategy.

Cloud use in the enterprise continues to grow. Eighty-four percent say their cloud use has increased in the past year. Half of enterprises say they will use cloud for at least 75 percent of their workloads by 2018.

Security isn’t an implementation impediment. In fact, 80 percent of enterprises say their cloud environment is as secure (40 percent) or more secure (20 percent say “a bit more secure,” 20 percent say “much more secure”) compared to their on premise infrastructure.

The network: better matters. Enterprises believe the network is critical to the success of cloud projects. And 86 percent of respondents say the cloud infrastructure is as available/reliable as their on premise infrastructure.